The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant eBook

THE

YOUNG GENTLEMAN

AND

LADY’S MONITOR,

AND

ENGLISH TEACHERS ASSISTANT,

Pursuit of Knowledge recommended to Youth.

1. I am very much concerned when I see young
gentlemen of fortune and quality so wholly set upon
pleasure and diversions, that they neglect all those
improvements in wisdom and knowledge which may make
them easy to themselves and useful to the world.
The greatest part of our British youth lose
their figure, and grow out of fashion, by that time
they are five and twenty.

2. As soon as the natural gaiety and amiableness
of the young man wears off, they have nothing left
to recommend them, but lie by the rest of their
lives, among the lumber and refuse of the species.

It sometimes happens, indeed, that for want of applying
themselves in due time to the pursuits of knowledge,
they take up a book in their declining years, and
grow very hopeful scholars by that time they are threescore.
I must therefore earnestly press my readers who are
in the flower of their youth, to labour at these accomplishments
which may set off their persons when their bloom is
gone, and to lay in timely provisions for manhood
and old age. In short, I would advise the youth
of fifteen to be dressing up every day the man of fifty;
or to consider how to make himself venerable at threescore.

3. Young men, who are naturally ambitious, would
do well to observe how the greatest men of antiquity
wade it their ambition to excel all their cotemporaries
in knowledge. Julius Caesar and Alexander,
the most celebrated instances of human greatness,
took a particular care to distinguish themselves by
their skill in the arts and sciences. We have
still extant, several remains of the former, which
justify the character given of him by the learned
men of his own age.

4. As for the latter, it is a known saying of
his, that he was more obliged to Aristotle,
who had instructed him, than to Philip, who
had given him life and empire. There is a letter
of his recorded by Plutarch and Aulus Gellius,
which he wrote to Aristotle, upon hearing that
he had published those lectures he had given him in
private. This letter was written in the following
words, at a time when he was in the height of his
Persian conquests.

5. “ALEXANDER to ARISTOTLE, Greeting.

“You have not done well to publish your books
of select knowledge; for what is there now in which
I can surpass others, if those things which I have
been instructed in are communicated to every body?
For my own part I declare to you, I would rather excel
others in knowledge than power. Farewell.”

6. We see by this letter, that the love of conquest
was but the second ambition in Alexander’s
soul. Knowledge is indeed that, which, next to
virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above
another. It finishes one half of the human soul.
It makes being pleasant to us, fills the mind with
entertaining views, and administers to it a perpetual
series of gratifications.